Whatcom County and the state's ecology department added the two controversial questions to the proposed coal terminal's environmental impact study

by Floyd McKay Crosscut NewsGateway Pacific, the giant export terminal north of Bellingham, took a major step forward Thursday as developers agreed to a $7.2 million contract for an environmental study on what would become Washington’s first coal-export terminal.The new agreement, with the engineering firm CH2M Hill, follows on the heels of an earlier $1.9 million deal to conduct public meetings and prepare the scope of review. That brings the total environmental review cost for Gateway Pacific to $9,089,911, according to Whatcom County officials who will supervise the contract.SSA Marine and BNSF Railway — both signed Thursday — will deal with subcontractors who will assess the project's impacts on human and animal health, marine life, wetlands, railway and shipping traffic and Native American culture. Whatcom County posted the contracts here on Friday.In what could be a precedent-setting proceeding, Whatcom County and the Washington Department of Ecology have also called for a review of the impacts of increased railroad traffic across the state, as well as a study on the impact on climate change of burning the coal in Asia.The call for a railway study brought objections from BNSF, which inserted statements in the contract: “BNSF Railway reserves its right to challenge the (state) EIS and any related agency actions at any time and in any forum . . . BNSF Railway in no way consents to jurisdiction of Ecology or County over any BNSF Railway action . . .” The railroad, which would haul the coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to the Gateway site, insists that federal law and agencies govern its operations, under the Interstate Commerce section of the U.S. Constitution.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has opted for a narrower scope of environmental review, excluding rail traffic and climate change. The Corps, however, has sole jurisdiction to work with the Lummi Nation, which has raised strong objections to the terminal’s potential impact on fishing and cultural rights. The site was once a Lummi fishing and hunting ground, and its waters are used by tribal fishers.Although the contracts call for the complex studies to be completed by April 30, 2015, nearly all proceedings thus far have taken longer than expected. The contracts allow for extensions if the studies are not completed on time. Once the Draft EIS is finished, it will face public hearings and action by several agencies, the first of which is likely to be the Whatcom County Council.SSA Marine has been working for an export terminal at Cherry Point, north of Bellingham, for nearly three decades. An earlier proposal, smaller and without coal, was approved by Whatcom County in 1997, but encountered environmental objections which resulted in a negotiated agreement in 1999. This plan is more than six times larger and is currently focused on coal. Peabody Coal and Cloud Peak Mining have already secured commitments if the terminal proceeds.Gateway Pacific would accept some 48 million tons of coal a year, drawing nearly 1,000 ships through Puget Sound annually. Coal trains, which would run through the state from Spokane to the Columbia Gorge and up Western Washington, would number about nine loaded and nine empty trains a day, each a mile and a half long.A similar contract is being readied for the Millennium terminal proposed at Longview on the Columbia River. It is also expected to have a broad scope of environmental review. A third export terminal, considerably smaller, has been proposed for the Columbia at Boardman, upriver from Portland. That environmental review is less sweeping than the ones in Washington.

Amid all the debate about the risk of coal trains spreading coal dust into areas near the railroad tracks, it’s often forgotten that the subject is controversial even within the industry. How to control coal dust—or whether it can be done at all to a meaningful degree—has been the subject of a long-running dispute between those who ship the coal and those who carry it. The coal companies or utilities that ship the coal are on one side and the railroads that carry it are on the other.

Sightline Institute has a new accounting of Northwest oil train projects.

by Eric de Place

Sightline is re-releasing a popular report: The Northwest’s Pipeline on Rails. It’s the most comprehensive regional analysis of plans to ship crude oil by train. Moving large quantities of oil by rail would represent a major change for the Northwest’s energy economy, and the plans now in development puts the region’s communities at risk.Why does it matter?

If all of the projects were built and operated at full capacity, they would put an estimated 11 loaded mile-long trains per day on the Northwest’s railway system. Many worry about the risk of oil spills from thousands of loaded oil trains that may soon traverse the region each year.

A string of high profile oil train explosions has raised widespread concern about the risks of moving crude oil by rail through populated areas. States and local governments across North America are beginning to seek more information about oil shipments and demand stricter tank car standards from federal regulators.

Taken together, the oil-by-rail projects planned for the Northwest would be capable of delivering enough fuel to exceed the region’s oil refining capacity. Ironically, two of the facilities that would handle oil by rail were originally built to supply renewable fuels.

The projects are designed to transport fuel from the Bakken oil formation in North Dakota, but the infrastructure could also be used to export Canadian tar sands oil. In fact, if all of the oil-by-rail projects were built, they would be capable of moving 785,000 barrels per day—that’s more oil capacity than either of the controversial pipelines planned in British Columbia, and nearly as much as the planned Keystone XL pipeline.

On Puget Sound, three of the region’s five refineries already receive oil-by-rail shipments, and the other two are planning new facilities. Three proposals for Grays Harbor would move oil along the Washington coast. And on the Columbia RIver, one port terminal is already receiving oil-by-rail shipments, while officials at Vancouver are planning by far the region’s largest facility.

by Floyd McKay Crosscut.comThey call it “The Funnel,” a 70-mile confluence of BNSF rail tracks that feeds nearly 50 trains daily into Spokane and, according to an exhaustive research study, as many as 82 additional coal and oil trains could cascade into The Funnel in another decade.The study warns that the “heavy traffic ahead” could damage both agriculture and intermodal shipping that must compete with coal and oil trains on a rail system that faces limits both around Spokane and across the state.Big Energy’s race to the Pacific has already generated a lot of controversy west of the Cascades, but impacts on Eastern Washington, the Columbia Gorge and Montana are likely to be even more significant, according to the report for the Western Organization of Resource Councils, based in Billings. (The council describes itself as a regional network of grassroots groups dedicated to building "a democratic, sustainable and just society through community action.) The research was done by Terry Whiteside and Gerald Fauth, both with deep backgrounds in transportation.The report finds there will be sharp growth in the volume of U.S. coal exports through the Pacific Northwest. By 2023, the Northwest could exports 170 million tons if all proposed or expanded ports go ahead; 2012 saw 11.8 million tons of U.S. coal exports, all via Canada. Coal trains (full and empty) would go from 7 a day currently to from 52 to 62 daily in 2023. Oil trains, still relatively few, are seen as quickly reaching 22 a day — nearly half would go to Vancouver, Wash., where a proposed Tesoro-Savage terminal is now being studied by the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council.The export of crude oil is barred by federal law; the Bakken crude would go from trains to West Coast refineries or terminals such as Vancouver, for barging to refineries. But efforts to lift the export ban have been discussed in Congress.The potential of 85 daily energy trains would be added to a system already nearing capacity in several key sections. Not all proposed terminals will be approved, the authors note, but even if 75 percent are, the traffic would be very heavy. Their report is the first comprehensive study since Bakken oil entered the Big Energy mix.The authors raise the potential impact on Northwest industries of coal and oil trains dominating the rail infrastructure and, in essence, bullying smaller industries off the routes that many have used for generations:As a result of the high volume and profitable revenue, [Powder River Basin to Pacific Northwest] export coal movements and Bakken oil trains to the [Pacific Northwest] would likely be favored by the railroads over other types of existing railroad traffic. The remaining capacity available to other railroad shippers would be limited, constrained, and more expensive. ... Other freight shippers would likely see increased costs and higher railroad rates as a result of rail congestion and the limitations on available rail capacity. Railroad transit times would likely increase for other railroad traffic as a result of congestion.BNSF has consistently maintained that it can handle additional traffic without shorting longtime customers. Then-CEO Matt Rose in November 2012 told Puget Sound Business Journal, “Why would we want to haul one type of freight at the expense of another? The answer would be, we’re going to handle all customers’ business — that’s in our own self-interest. We think with long-term planning, and working with WSDOT, and the other agencies we deal with, and providing proper capital, we can do that.”Whiteside and Fauth say Rose understates the potential traffic.

The matter of effects on existing industries has not been widely discussed by regional business and industry leaders, who have either supported the export plans or, more frequently, kept out of the controversy. Chambers of Commerce, predictably, have led the drum rolls, in several instances in an alliance with construction and shipping unions.

LONGVIEW, WA - Today, the Washington State Department of Ecology and Cowlitz County announced a broad scope of their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the proposed coal export terminal in Longview in southwest Washington State. If built, it would be the largest coal export terminal in North America, exporting up to 44 million metric tons of coal per year to Asia.

“It’s great to see the Dept. of Ecology and County Cowlitz using their authority to raise questions about the vast threats to coal exports,” said Gayle Kiser, a local Longview resident and president of Landowners and Citizens for a Safe Community. “This broad scope of the environmental and health review by the agencies reflects our Northwest values and common sense. The entire state of Washington, including Cowlitz County residents, would face impacts from coal export. Coal export would pollute our air and water, and halt the flow of traffic in our towns. Taxpayers and local governments can’t afford to put the blinders on for coal export; our agencies cannot either.”

The agencies will take a broad look at the impacts of the proposed terminal through the EIS, and will include a number of impacts: coal dust around the terminal, rail traffic and coal dust including in Montana, Idaho and the Columbia River Gorge, and the effects of coal combustion in China on Washington state, in particular carbon and mercury pollution. The Army Corps of Engineers has yet to announce their scope for Longview but took a very narrow one with the Cherry Point terminal. “The Spokane City Council previously unanimously voted to have our voice heard in the building of coal export facilities and its great news that our state agency listened,” said Ben Stuckart, City of Spokane, City Council President. “Spokane has much to lose, and little to gain by allowing all these new coal trains through our town. Such an increase would harm our air quality, transportation systems, and emergency response. Today is a great step in the right direction for Spokane.”

The Dept. of Ecology, Cowlitz County and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers received over 215,000 public comments and heard from thousands of citizens last fall during the public comment period. That brings the total to 370,000 comments that have been submitted on coal export proposals in the Northwest. More than 60 local governments, including 28 local jurisdictions, submitted official comments on proposed Longview terminal. Over 160 elected officials, 500 businesses, and 600 health professionals have expressed concern or opposition to coal export.

“I’m pleased that the State of Washington is including rail impacts to Montana. These trains don’t just materialize at the Washington border, and the impacts increased coal traffic would have on emergency response times and air quality in Montana cities and towns is significant,” said Dawson Dunning of Montana, whose family has ranched near the proposed Otter Creek coal mine for generations. “We still have a ways to go to make sure that our ranching and agricultural interests are taken under full consideration in light of the drastic impacts increased mining would have on Montana and Wyoming. Any review of these ports needs to take a harder look at the survival of ranching communities and economies like ours.”

The Longview terminal is one of three remaining proposals in Washington and Oregon; three proposals have been pulled off the table in the last two years. The proponents of the terminal include Ambre Energy, its American subsidiary Millennium Bulk Logistics, and Arch Coal.

The Longview coal export proposal has a rocky history. In 2011, a legal challenge exposed internal documents showing that Ambre and their US subsidiary Millennium Bulk Logistics lied to Cowlitz County and state officials about the size of their project, claiming it would ship five million tons per year when they planned a project more than 10 times that size.

The release of the Longview scope comes on the heels of the Oregon Dept. of Environmental Quality yesterday announcing that they will require Ambre Energy to do an additional water quality certification process at their proposed terminal in Boardman, OR on the Columbia River.

Much of the oil traveling by train to the profusion of new oil-by-rail terminals is shipped in what one Chicago-area leader called the “Ford Pinto of railroad cars.” These are the soda-can shaped tank cars, DOT-111s, built to standards in effect as recently as 2011 that have a “high incidence of failure during accidents.” If used to ship crude oil, their design flaws pretty much guarantee that a serious train derailment will lead to oil spills or massive explosions.One summer night in 2013, a rail accident involving DOT-111s resulted in a catastrophic explosion that killed 47 people in a small town in Quebec. In the months that followed, DOT-111s carrying oil unleashed towering explosions in Alabama, North Dakota, and New Brunswick.These mishaps were not accidents, so much as they were the logical consequence of a sea change in the way that we transport crude oil. A few years ago, a sudden oil boom from shale geologies, such as the Bakken formation of western North Dakota, caught almost everyone by surprise. With few good options for moving the abundant new found oil to market, companies turned to railroads in a big way: shipments of crude oil by rail spiked, and then spiked again.Yet shippers are moving oil largely in the old DOT-111 tank cars that for more than 20 years we’ve known are unsafe. In fact, since 1991, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued several crash investigation and safety recommendation reports involving tank cars documenting the inadequacies of the DOT-111 standard.Things came to a head after a high profile collision in 2009 when a slow moving train composed of DOT-111 cars hauling ethanol derailed at a road-crossing in Cherry Valley, Illinois. The resulting fireball fatally burned a passenger and seriously injured three others in vehicles waiting at the crossing. Local officials had to evacuate residents within a half-mile of the incident.

In its subsequent report on the Cherry Valley explosion, the NTSB once again documented the inability of DOT-111s to withstand the forces of accidents even when traveling at low speeds. Investigators ticked off a long list of known problems: the thinness of the DOT-111 metal shell, lack of shielding for tank ends, weak housings for top fittings, tanks that don’t separate from rail car frames during a crash causing them to rip open, outlet valves that open when handles get caught by objects during a crash, and bottom outlet valves that are difficult to protect. (Here is a summary presentation of their DOT-111 findings.) The flaws were so numerous and so severe that the agency urged their owners to retrofit all existing tank cars carrying ethanol and crude oil.

The NTSB recommendations were largely ignored. Tank cars are regulated not by the NTSB but by another government body: the US Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration (PHMSA) based on standards developed by a private industry group, the American Association of Railroads. (Transport Canada also plays a role in regulatory development.) After the Cherry Valley incident, PHMSA issued new standards to increase the crashworthiness of the tank cars, but only for those ordered after October 2011.So today, oil trains are mostly composed of the older, flawed DOT-111 tank cars. According to the railroad industry, 92,000 DOT-111 tank cars are used to move flammable liquids.Yet simply adding new tank cars to the mix of unsafe cars doesn’t work, according to the NTSB, because the “safety benefits [are] not realized if old and new tank cars are commingled.” In other words, if a unit train with old and new tank cars derails, the older DOT-111s will almost certainly breach and explode taking out the newer DOT-111s as well.Plus, even the newer DOT-111s with thicker shells and shielded ends still have an Achilles Heel: bottom outlet valves “which have been prone to failure in derailment accidents.” During derailment when a tank car skids along the ground, the bottom outlet valve’s operating levers are bent and pulled causing the valve to open, or the valve is sheared off all together. In the Cherry Valley derailment, for example, bottom outlet valves in three tank cars opened and released most, if not all, of the ethanol from those cars. The NTSB found that the bottom outlet valve handle breakaway design in use “has been shown to be of limited effectiveness in preventing product releases from bottom outlets” and that existing standards and regulations for the protection of bottom outlet valves on tank cars “are insufficient to ensure that the valves remain closed during accidents.”It’s a risk that has been recognized for many years. In fact, based on NTSB recommendations, members of the Chemical Manufacturers’ Association, in the early 1990s voluntarily upgraded the tank cars hauling hazardous chemicals (DOT-105s and DOT-112s) to eliminate bottom outlet valves because of their inherent danger. But crude oil, even the notoriously combustible oil from the Bakken region, need not be moved in these safer tank cars.

Bottom outlet valves may be the issue to watch. If new oil-by-rail facilities support only tank cars that can be unloaded by a bottom outlet valve, they will guarantee the presence of a needlessly dangerous design for oil trains.

After each oil train derailment, the railroad industry has pointed out that only a tiny percentage of all rail shipments of hazardous materials result in a release caused by a train accident. Theseindustry statistics are at least partially bogus, as EarthFix reporter Tony Shick demonstrated, but in a sense it doesn’t matter.With DOT-111 tank cars carrying volatile liquids, any accident rate greater than zero is too high.To eliminate the risk of a catastrophic explosion, every trip hauling Bakken crude or ethanol has to be perfect. The tracks can never be tampered with; no auto or truck can ever stall in a crossing (or be left on the track maliciously); no mix ups in communication can ever occur; no mudslide can hit a train. There is no margin for error. Because if a train with older DOT-111 tank cars derails and piles up, or if multiple car-to-car impacts ensue, the tank cars will “almost always” be breached. Even with newer DOT-111 tank cars, the risk is not reduced if they are mixed in with the older version. And a train composed solely of newer tank cars still has failure-prone bottom outlet valves on each and every tank car.There is a fix for all this: temporarily decommission the outdated DOT-111s pending their upgrade, and run oil only in new or retrofitted tank cars without bottom outlet valves. In the next post, we’ll explain why this hasn’t happened—and who’s behind it.